I covered him up with a blanket and turned to examine the rest of the room. Not much to it. A lot of toys, most of them more or less put away, and a dresser which the two kids evidently shared, a little table and chairs, and a closet.

A nice, shadowy closet.

I grunted and got on the floor to peer beneath the little pink bed. Then I squinted at the closet. If I was four and lying on the girl’s bed, the closet would be looming right past the ends of my toes.

I closed my eyes for a moment and reached out with my wizard’s senses, feeling the flow and ebb of energy through the house. Within the defensive wall of the threshold, other energy pulsed and moved-emotions from the house’s inhabitants, random energies sifting in from outdoors, the usual.

But not in the closet. There wasn’t anything at all in that closet.

“Ah hah,” I said.

“Third A,” I said, writing on the board. “Assemble.”

“Avengers…” said McKenzie.

“Assemble!” crowed the young Wardens in unison.

They’re good kids.

“That is, in fact, one potential part of this phase of the investigation,” I said, taking the conversation back in hand as I nodded my approval. “Sometimes, once you’ve figured out what’s going on, you go and round up reinforcements. But what assembling really means, for our purposes, is putting everything together. You’ve got your information. Now you need to decide what to do with it. You plan what steps you need to take. You work out the possible consequences of your actions.”

“Here’s where you use your brain. If the foe has a weakness, you figure out how to exploit it. If you’ve got an advantage of terrain, you figure out how to use it. If you need specialized gear or equipment to help, here’s where you get it.” I started a stack of papers around the room. “There’s recipes on these handouts for a couple of the most common things you’ll use: an antidote for Red Court venom, which you’re familiar with, and an ointment for your eyes that’ll let you see through most faerie glamour, which you may not know about. Get used to making these.”